Room vs. Speakers

Hey there,

Setting up the second room in my rental apartment as my mix room. Width: 10ft Length: 11ft Height: 9ft

I have a pair of Focal solos presently. Placing the speakers on the 10ft wall. There’s windows (not centred) on both the 10ft walls… is what it is. I have two massive book shelves I can use in the corners as pseudo bass traps, and some basic panelling I can use for catching first reflections. My first step is to work with what I got best I can. Really experiment with placement etc, and see how far that will get me. I’m antsy to upgrade my monitors beyond the solos. I have a feeling there’s options above in the near field(mid field?)category I could see cleaner resolution, depth, and spectrum from. That said, also curious to work the solos with a sub, as that could be a great solution too, but is also a bit of a rabbit hole in my mind.

All this said, my room has a ceiling (lol) to what I can do on a treatment level. My goal is to be on as high performing a monitoring system as I can be in small spaces like this. Don’t see myself having a spacious mix room for a while to come, so hoping to think about how I can build on this set up and future proof it. FWIW, I already do a lot of work on headphones (lcdx, love them ❤️, m50x for checking as well) and feel that I really need just a solid speaker set up for tweaking and finishing the mixes + quality control. Just curious if anyone out there had any insight/suggestions/ advice that may be helpful for me given what I’m trying to achieve here.

I am super blessed to have very regular access to a treated room with focal trios, which is a huge asset, but I’m not in a position to commit to this space as my only mix space.